Hans Frank - Governor-General of Occupied Poland: Biography

One of the defendants in the Nuremberg trial was Hans Frank, Hitler's personal lawyer, the Reichsleiter, who was in charge of the Reich Legal Department, and later became governor-general in occupied Poland. It was he who was guilty of the death of many thousands of Jews, sent on his orders to the so-called death camps.

short biography

Hans Michael Frank was born on May 23, 1900 in the German city of Karlsruhe. He was a lawyer by profession, he was a famous politician and statesman of Nazi Germany, the Reichsleiter, and also the Governor-General of Poland from 1939 to 1945. His father was a lawyer, so it is not surprising that the son decided to follow in his footsteps. After graduation from the gymnasium in Munich in 1918, he was drafted into the army. Since Frank was then very young, in World War I he did not take long, and even as a soldier.

In early 1919, he joined the ranks of the Volunteer Corps, and in April took part in the fighting against the Communists who proclaimed the Bavarian socialist republic in Munich. In the same year he became a member of the German Workers' Party, and then in its reformed version - the NSDAP. Until 1923, he successfully studied law in Kiel, Munich and Vienna. In the middle of the same year he joined the ranks of the SA and was a member of the so-called Beer Putsch. After a failed conspiracy, Frank was forced to leave Germany and flee to Italy. After his return in 1924 at the University of Kiel he successfully defended his thesis with great success.

As we know, before the Nazis came to power, the secret support of the Thule Society, headed by Rudolf von Sebottendorf, financially supported their party. The doctrine of this organization was based mainly on German-Scandinavian mythology, where ancient rudes, pagan symbols, swastikas, etc. were used for rituals. Most of the members of the NSDAP were alike in it, as they were extremely interested in this occult teaching. Hans Frank was also admitted to the ranks of the Thule Society. Like other participants, he studied the legends of once disappeared civilizations, such as Atlantis, Lemuria, Arctida, etc.

The Nazi career

In 1926, while already a Chartered Lawyer, Hans Frank began his advocacy in Munich with the fact that he defended his party members arrested in court for involvement in the armed conflict with the Communists. I must say that between 1925 and 1933 more than 40 thousand similar processes took place. One of them was invited and Adolf Hitler. There he acted as a witness.

After that, the future Fuhrer invited Frank to become his personal lawyer and appointed him head of the legal department of the NSDAP. Thus, the young man began to represent the interests of Hitler in court, where he acted as a defender in 150 trials. Since 1930, the lawyer also met in the German Reichstag. Endlessly trusting Hans Frank, Hitler gave him a secret mission, the purpose of which was to prove that he completely lacked Jewish blood.

After the Nazis came to power, the future ruler of Poland held several significant positions, such as the minister and the Reichsminister of Justice, and when he was just over thirty, he was appointed Reichsleiter of the NSDAP. In addition, he held a number of posts concerning German law.

Governor-General

In mid-October 1939, after the Polish territory was captured, Hitler decided to appoint Hans Frank the head of the newly organized administration dealing with the affairs of the population of these occupied lands. A little later he was promoted to office, and he took the place of the Governor-General of Poland.

The policy pursued by Frank in this country boiled down to the fact that he intended to treat her as a colony. According to him, the Poles had to turn, no less than many, into the slaves of great Germany. In order to realize this insane idea, he consistently destroyed the national education. In addition, he mercilessly exploited both the material and human resources of Poland, using them in the interests of the Nazi state. Thus, he did everything to turn the country into a raw material appendage of Hitler's Germany.

Criminal activity

The first thing the newly appointed governor-general did was to make German official, and also warned all Poles and Jews that for every slight disobedience to the occupation forces or any damage caused to the social system that he had introduced, they would be sentenced to death .

Hans Frank took various artistic values from numerous Polish museums and decorated their own house in Schliersee (South Germany). According to his order, confiscation of personal property of citizens was carried out everywhere. He allowed his subordinates to export huge quantities of food from the territory under his control to Germany. He allowed himself to arrange refined and rich feasts in the governor's palace of Krakow when a significant part of Europe was suffering from hunger.

About his cruelty and indifference to human life is evidenced by the fact that by the end of 1942 more than 85% of Jews living in Poland had been sent according to the signed order to the "death camps", where they died from cold, hunger and Torture.

A fair sentence

After the defeat of the Third Reich, several dozens of high-ranking Hitlerite officials appeared before the International Military Tribunal, which was held in Nuremberg in 1945-1946. Among them was the former Polish tyrant - Hans Frank. He, like others, was accused of three main points: crimes committed against humanity, violation of military law, and conspiracy against the whole world. Two of them sentenced him to death.

I must say that he was the only Nazi who fully admitted his guilt and bitterly repented of his crimes. This German officer never believed in God, but shortly before the execution he still accepted Catholicism. According to eyewitnesses, the last words of Hans Frank were addressed specifically to the Almighty. The criminal was executed on the night of October 16, 1946, along with ten of his fellow party members. At the Nuremberg trial, Frank was the accused at number seven.

Memoirs of the Nazi

Until the end of June 1945, virtually all the main defendants who once formed the ruling elite of the Third Reich, except for Hitler, Himmler and Goebbels, who committed suicide, fearing retaliation, were arrested. Among them was the former Reichsleiter Frank.

Since the war criminals were not executed immediately, they had time to think about how they lived their lives. Many of them began to write down their memories. Such texts were written by Hans Frank. "Face to the scaffold" - the so-called book, published by the efforts of his wife after the justice. As you know, in post-war Germany it was very popular, as evidenced by its circulation - more than 50 thousand copies. For this money, earned from the sale of the book, lived for several years the family of Frank - the wife and five children.